Week 1 DFS Picks: Best Game and Team Stacks

Since it is Week 1, a refresher on what these DFS articles will entail.

Every week, I will go through the players I am targeting to play in DFS for all games, tournaments, and game stacks.

The idea is that this will paint a clearer picture of framing lineups.

Week 1 DFS Content:

One of my favorite ways to play DFS from a tournament standpoint is small-field, single-entry to five-max games with fields of 5K or smaller.

Both sites even offer these types of games with fewer than 100 entries (albeit at a higher cost of entry) if you want to go after a really small field.

In these contests, my approach is to go with full-game stacks.

You will likely lose a lot of weeks, but if you get the game right, you will gain a significant advantage.

Just cashing in on one of these over an 18-week season can make your entire year.

When doing these, I want to aggressively build around games that have a wider range of outcomes.

Still, with the reduced number of entries, you can also eat some chalky game stacks because we are going further in the overall game stack than our opponents likely will.

This is the spot where you will find some missing names from the core and tournament play sections.

Just because a player is not mentioned in those two pieces does not mean I will have zero exposure to them.

These are the games I am circling for those smaller tournaments in Week 1, but you can also tie these games into your stacks for other tournaments.

You can dig deeper into why I believe these games present some downside in the Worksheet, but we are solely playing for the upside outcome here in these games.

I will have some analysis on the player selections and game writeups, but check out the Week 1 Worksheet for a fully detailed breakdown of the players and games.

Panthers at Jaguars

This is the game I am looking to stack the most on the early slate.

We have a 47-point total featuring two of the league’s worst defenses from a year ago.

The Jaguars (-149.9 EPA) and the Panthers (-116.6 EPA) were the two worst teams in expected points added on passing defense in 2024.

Both have made roster changes and may not operate at those bottom-rung levels, but the other component in play here is that nearly everyone is on the cheaper side, allowing us to really attack this game.

In those early-only slates, this is a game we can load up on.

Brian Thomas Jr. is the only player here who has a high price tag.

I prefer to play this game through the Jaguars since Carolina has a few offensive injuries.

Trevor Lawrence paired with Thomas Jr. and Brenton Strange is a cheap double stack that will cost you less than a third of your salary cap on both sites.

You can add Tetairoa McMillan to that and still be well below half of the cap.

While that is my preferred core from this game, we have plenty of room to mix and match additions of Travis Hunter and Travis Etienne on the Jaguars side.

Carolina will be without Jalen Coker and Ikem Ekwonu, which may dampen the outlook for the Carolina offense, but we can still target some smaller pieces if you want to approach this game through Bryce Young.

Even if you do not, Xavier Legette and Ja’Tavion Sanders come with bargain-bin pricing.

There are multiple combinations of this game where a six-player stack of this game will only run you ~60% of the cap on both sites.

Bengals at Browns